Precision Tools in Woodworking

[Stanley Covington]

Well, if you want to play that game, I have degree in engineering too. I'm also a professional engineer every day of the week, I teach a masters class in bridge design, and I'm an expert in seismic retrofit design, and engineering materials science.

As I said before, I'm happy that you have methods of work that suit your needs.
But I think you take it too far by at least a full order of magnitude.
Just a suggestion here, but you might be happier sharing your methods of work and how they have helped you and just leaving it at that rather than being offended by others who may disagree.
Like I said, just a suggestion.

Thank you for your suggestion.

I have no problem with people that disagree with me. After all, this forum is a place for people to share their opinions, and those opinions are going to clash. And you will note that I did not respond to those that objected to things I actually wrote in my post.

But I do not feel it useful to remain silent in cases of misunderstanding. You wrote that wood could not be measured to .0001" because it is so soft the micrometer would crush the wood. That may or may not be, but the fact remains that nowhere did I suggest using a micrometer to measure wood to the ten thousandth. Go back and check.

If you are interested, I use a digital caliper to measure wood thickness when planing by hand or by machine. By pure coincidence, my Mitsutoyo measures to the ten thousandth of an inch, but it would be silly of me to suppose that measuring to .0001" would be useful outside of a CNC production situation, or that a dial caliper with its big jaws could actually measure wood to that level consistently. I ignore the last digit. And ignoring that last digit is irritating. The next caliper I buy will not measure beyond .001". Once again, I do not suggest using a micrometer to measure wood, nor do I suggest that readers of this forum should measure to the ten thousandth of an inch with any tool. Please do not accuse me of being an idiot, or for not paying attention in school, for something I did not write.

One thing I learned while working in the industry is that, while there are similarities, steel and wood are not the same, as you correctly pointed out. They have very different engineering properties. Consequently, there are significant differences in how wood must be handled to achieve consistent tolerances. But that doesn't mean that it can't be done, just that most people don't know how to do it. The truth is that the people on this forum don't need to concern themselves with such tolerances, therefore, I apologize for even mentioning that CNC machines could cut/mill wood to high tolerances, and for the misunderstanding that factual statement has created.

Another post ridiculed the specs that I recommended. What specs? What recommendation? I simply told of two of my experiences that actually mentioned tolerances, one about the accuracy of a particular steel tool, and the other about some CNC machinery. But I did not recommend a single spec, or tolerance, or numerical value to anyone, nor did I suggest that the readers of this forum should follow some specific specs or tolerances. Go back and check. If someone disagrees with me, that is their right, but if they post a criticism of what I wrote, I insist that criticism be about something I actually wrote, and not attribute nonsense to me. If left alone, incorrect attributions often come to be perceived as factual.

Thank you again for your entirely correct suggestion.